Some people are not happy to see former First Lady Laura Bush receive the Alice Paul Award from the Sewall-Belmont House. The annual award given by the headquarters for the National Women’s Party is named for the acclaimed suffragette who picketed the White House and was jailed for her tireless effort to win women the right to vote in 1920.
A protest letter signed by 20 women protesting the selection states:
Laura Bush is not known as a champion of women’s rights. She has done little or nothing to advance American women’s equality … Her advocacy on behalf of Afghan women is commendable, but she has been conspicuously absent in every major arena of American women’s rights … To give it to a non-feminist Republican figurehead, at a time when the Republican Party is doing its utmost to demolish women’s hard-fought rights, reflects a stunning lapse of judgment.
Wow. Where to begin? How about the notion that the Republican Party is trying to rescind the rights our foremothers demanded and won for us? We can vote, work, marry, not marry, plan our families, be breadwinners, raise our kids … the list is exhaustive. Which one of these rights, exactly, is the GOP trying to take away? None. The answer is none.
Speaking of women’s rights, you know who does not enjoy the freedoms we American dames have? Afghan women. As the letter mentions, Laura Bush has done commendable work advocating for girls and women in Afghanistan, but it glosses over it.
After the United States went after the Taliban in Afghanistan, the world was made aware of the horrible subjugation suffered by Afghan women. They were not allowed to leave their homes without escorts, educating girls was illegal, and mutilations were common. Laura Bush helped change the culture in that oppressive country, where girls now go to school and women now work “as entrepreneurs, educators, lawyers and community health workers.”
That is a win for the international sisterhood, girlfriends.
Domestically, she has been a champion for childhood literacy, because when you can read, you don’t have to depend on others for information dissemination. Knowledge is power, and the best way to gain it is to read all that you can.
One last thing: The protest letter states that Laura Bush has done virtually nothing when it comes to advocating for American women. I think a few feminists should read up on the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health, a research facility dedicated to discovering how diseases and illnesses affect male and female bodies differently. If that’s not looking out for women’s health, I don’t know what is.
Laura Bush absolutely deserves this award for her tremendous commitment nationally and worldwide in seeing all women rise to their full potential.
Image via Bush Library/Flickr
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Comments 33
Laura seems worthy of the award to me. It seems like the organization made an intelligent and informed choice. Why make such a big deal out of the opinion of a mere 20 women, out of the many, many thousands in this country? Twenty women doesn't represent "feminists" or any other large group. Sounds like those women couldn't see beyond their own partisan ideology. There will always be people like this, and frankly, in most of her columns, the author of this piece seems to be one of them. (This one would have been pretty okay if not for the overgeneralizing title.)
Yes, the republican party is actively trying to take away the "plan your family" right by not only trying to stop abortion but (and what is so much worse) actively trying to take away access to contraceptives and education to those women who need it most (the teenagers and poor). So no education and lack of access to affordable contraceptives (if there is access to it at all)= babies! So which is more expensive- all the money we dump into a family that is unable to afford their children (with food stamps, rent and often health care) or providing some free condoms and some free birth control pills? The logic republicans state on this matter makes no sense and can easily be seen right through by anyone paying attention. The republican party is NOT for women on this issue and many other women's rights issues.
Yay for Laura Bush.
Boo for that sad, tired arguement that we must have EITHER a fully-funded, free-to-all Planned Parenthood on every corner of every city and town in America, OR every teen girl and low-income woman carrying a plethora of unwanted children. Women need to think with their heads instead of their ovaries, and stop letting politicians use your reproductive system as a pawn and distraction.
DebaLa: "Not every FLOTUS can be a Dolly Madison or Eleanor Roosevelt. God, we could have had another Nancy, Mamie or Mary Todd!"
Or a Marie Antoinette, like the current FLOTUS.
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chigirl1228: "Um texasmamma... what does define a women besides our reproductive organs? Last I checked that is what made us a woman."
chigirl, if you don't know the answer to your question either through inexperience, naivete, ignorance and/or ideology, or some other reason, I'm sorry. But it would take too much time and too many words to explain it to you here and now.
Keep studying! And keep repeating #SayVagina! *Sigh*
t0vanol: "The Republican party is actively trying to take away access to contraceptives and education to those women who need it most (the teenagers and poor)".
t0vanol, can you provide some proof of your baseless assertion?
There you have it! Clearly McDonald's is trying to deny me access to food! They are trying to take away my right to eat!
Ummm last time I checked, Republicans were trying to take away a womans right to an abortion........that is a right, whether you agree or not. You can't just not mention and basically ignore it.....